1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic recording apparatus, and more particularly to a cleaning apparatus that removes residual toner remaining on a photoconductive body after transfer of a toner image.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional electrophotographic recording apparatus uses an electrophotographic image forming process. A charging unit charges the surface of a rotating photoconductive body uniformly. Then, an exposing unit illuminates the charged surface of the photoconductive body in accordance with print data to form an electrostatic latent image. A developing unit supplies toner to the electrostatic latent image to develop the electrostatic latent image into a toner image. A transfer unit transfers the toner image onto a print medium, which in turn is fused into a permanent image in a fixing unit. A cleaning member is provided downstream of a transfer unit with respect to the direction of rotation of the photoconductive body. The developing unit is detachably attached to the image forming apparatus. Additionally, a fresh toner reservoir may be detachably attached to the developing unit.
A small amount of toner remains adhering to the photoconductive body after transferring the toner image onto the print medium. In order to remove the toner from the photoconductive body, a cleaning blade is provided in abutting relation with the photoconductive body. The cleaning blade scrapes the toner from the photoconductive body. The toner scraped by the cleaning blade is held in a residual toner chamber below the cleaning blade. The aforementioned conventional cleaning apparatus requires a relatively large chamber near the photoconductive body for collecting the toner scraped by the cleaning blade. Providing a relatively large chamber for merely holding useless toner is detrimental to miniaturizing the image forming apparatus.